The Occam's razor job - Chapter 34 - 3
Title: The Occam's razor Job
Characters: Nate Ford, Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, Parker, Sophie Deveraux, Patrick Bonnano
Fandom: Leverage
Spoilers: The Lonely Hearts Club Job, The Boy's night out Job
warnings: Dead people, language, violence, medical bullsh*t, extreme violence in later chapters, and extreme angst
Disclaimer: I do not own blah blah blah
Special, special, special, special thanks to trappercreekd for Betaing :D
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Nate and Parker went out with Bonnano, convincing him they were going only to the grocery store. Hardison was at his laptop, all communication was set at the lowest sound so Eliot couldn’t figure out he was listening and directing them, and Sophie was twice as concentrated not to reveal that she had an earbud. She was concerned he would guess it by her posture, and Betsy’s changing his bandages became useful as a distraction when he put down the phone and started to look around, noticing their long absence. Betsy didn’t know where they were, but she recognized his growing tension as time passed, and successfully diverted his attention.
He was sitting up while Betsy worked on the bandages and Sophie came closer, leaning on the shelf to hide Hardison from his sight; the hacker was typing at work speed, not game speed, and he had the we-are-in-the-middle-of-a-complicated-con aura around him.
She thought Eliot would ask her about their absence and she prepared a calm smile when he looked at her, but it froze on her face when she realized he didn’t see her. “Erm, Betsy…” she started just at the moment his eyelids fell closed and he swayed. Betsy caught him before he collapsed. Sophie quickly came closer.
“Go to his left side and hold him upright.” Betsy was boiling, and that scared her even more. She quickly connected heart monitor back. The beeping was slow and regular this time. “Now, look directly at the monitor and track any changes, okay? Don’t look anywhere else.” Betsy was doing something while she was speaking, and it took all her control not to look to see what. She counted the seconds as she counted the heartbeat, calculating the rhythm, and before she came to twenty, Betsy was wrapping the bandage around his back.
“What have you done?” Sophie whispered though she knew he couldn’t hear her; his head was lowered, he was completely out.
“The bleeding stopped during the night. I waited for a few more hours to be sure, but now I removed the chest tube, he doesn’t need it anymore. It’s a simple procedure.” By the time she finished talking, she was done with the bandages, and she eased him back to lie down, putting the mask back on his face.
“And why are you so mad then?”
“He’s doing exactly the same shit as he did in Mass Gen,” she said dryly. “He’s pushing himself beyond any reasonable limit, and he’s exhausting himself further. And trust me, now is not the time for that.”
“Morphine is still not an option?”
“It would lower his BP, I won’t risk that. He’s getting small doses of other analgesics through the IV, but it isn’t enough. He should have been sleeping for 20 hours a day. He hasn’t slept the last night, and this morning he pretended to sleep four times. If he continues with this he will continue to pass out, and he is too weak for that. The body shuts down when abused, he could slip into a coma the next time. The sleep heals, passing out doesn’t.”
Sophie stayed silent, listening via earbud to Nate whose conversation about the National Response Plan with the Assistant Secretary of Home Security Health Affairs was suddenly filled with unusual pauses as he listened to Betsy. Hardison was tapping his fingers on the table, she could hear that through the comm, and live.
Betsy was thinking, and she finally sighed and turned off the beeping, obviously deciding it would upset him further, and not be useful. She raised the upper part of the bed, lifting him into an almost sitting position, and Sophie pulled the blankets over his shoulders. He was cold to touch. And he looked so much younger when unconscious, she noticed, feeling an ache in her heart; it wasn’t fair that only passing out could erase the worry and tension from his face.
Betsy was watching her, she could sense her hawk eyes on her every move.
“I will not disturb him, Betsy,” she whispered lightly, touching his face with the back of her fingers; she could do that now without thinking about his reactions. It would be much easier if cuddling him, and everybody, could make all of this disappear.
Betsy said nothing.
Sophie silently went back to the table. He didn’t have the finger clamps anymore. The mask was on his face only occasionally. He didn’t have the chest tube, and with the bleeding stopped, there was no need for transfusions. And he needed only three seconds to disconnect the remaining IV tubes from his hands.
Time wasn’t on their side anymore.
“Nate, we need to talk,” she said in the earbud.
“Of course, Madame Secretary,” his smile warmed his voice. “I do agree that the Posse Comitatus Act does not cover these circumstances, and you are right - this is a Joint Special Operations Command line of work. I couldn’t sum it up better myself.”
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***
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Eliot regained consciousness - and he wasn’t sleeping, of course, he stared at the phone - when Nate and Parker returned an hour later, loaded down with bags full of groceries, quietly arguing about stealing apples from the market.
There was still a lot of work to do, so Nate prolonged the talk with Sophie; he knew what she would tell him. She wasn’t pressing either, some things were understood even without being said.
The first sign of the impending storm was Parker, sitting innocently on the kitchen counter, with a bowl of cereal in her lap. She was listening to Sophie and Betsy talking about shoes, while Nate and Hardison were going through different Boston maps on the laptop, and nothing would look suspicious if Nate didn’t hear a strangely loud crunching sound every time the thief grabbed into the bowl.
He glanced at her to check on her; she was frowning, but he couldn’t tell if it was because she tried to understand what the fuss about shoes was, or something new was bothering her.
Hardison and Sophie were tense and angry, worried to the point of explosion, and it grew with every hour that passed, after their every visit, but Parker wasn’t angry because of Eliot’s polite withdrawal. She was becoming more silent and darker every time she sneaked to check on him. She wasn’t trying to speak to him at all, though she heard everything he was saying to the others.
Nate got up to get more coffee when a piece of cereal jumped from her bowl when she reached into it, missing the laptop by an inch and falling into the popcorn on the table, and he used the opportunity to look at her bowl over her shoulder. Fuck. He went perfectly still, holding his breath, then carefully reached forward and slowly took the fork from her hand. She glared at him, but he smiled and gave her a spoon instead, taking the fork away.
He went back to the same position and from there he could see that the thief might be listening to the shoe conversation, but her eyes were surely going over their heads, to the bed on the other side.
“What’s troubling you, Parker?” he asked gently; the shoe conversation abruptly stopped.
The thief started swinging her legs, and said nothing.
“Parker?”
She hissed and stabbed in the bowl, but left it on the counter beside her. “He is sexting with Tapia,” she said quietly.
Hardison’s coffee ended up on the laptop monitor, in one explosive burst. Nate looked at Sophie’s aghast stare and sighed.
“Care to explain?”
“They've been texting like teenagers for almost an hour. And he smiled five times! Have you ever seen him smiling while texting with someone? Have you ever seen him texting before, by the way? It must be that sexting thing, there’s no other explanation.” She turned wide, worried eyes on him. “Tapia sent him a picture of some white building with palms, explaining something about the gambling procedures there, and Eliot replied with: ‘Don’t send this to anyone else; the registration plates on the parked cars are clearly visible, and you’re supposed to be hiding. How you survived in the cartel world continues to astound me’. It’s, like, four times longer than any sentences he said to us in two days!”
“How could you-” Nate stopped the sentence; she was the only one who could sneak up on Eliot even when he was well. “Look, he is working. He is using Tapia to confirm Villacorta’s location, and he's probably getting more useful information from him.”
“But Nate, he sounded nice the whole morning!” Parker lowered her voice to an upset whisper. “When he talks to us, he sounds just like he sounded while speaking to Villacorta on that terrace! We are now business to him, not a pleasure. He acts like we don’t exist anymore, while he speaks he looks through us!”
“You have to give him more time, Parker. He isn’t able to think completely clear yet, he is still confused and weak. It’s only been one day since we were sure he would live… he can’t-”
“I’m not talking about how strong his voice is, I’m talking about what’s in it!” Parker hissed.
“She is right, I’ve been watching that same shit the entire day, and the better part of yesterday. And I don’t like it at all,” Hardison jumped in. “I’m worried about that phone, too - we all know what he did with it in the hospital. I’m thinking about putting a camera behind his shoulder, or put motion detectors around the bed, or-”
“Have you, people, actually heard of the means of communication that’s called talk?” Betsy was looking at them like they all had a few spare heads. “You know, you might be very successful in your line of work, but I must say, you suck at common human relations. You are completely disabled in that field. You should have a car sticker, for god’s sake!”
“You’re right,” Parker blinked. “We have to talk to him. Something normal, usual, that will result in his normal reply. If he snaps and growls at us, it would be normal, right?”
Nate buried his face in his hand. “Betsy, I don’t think that’s a good idea, you don’t actually know her that well and I must-”
“It is,” Parker climbed down from the counter. Her eyes were glowing again. “I can do it. Normal. Usual. ”
Nate exchanged a look with Sophie; she was frozen, for a second unable to think of anything that would stop her. Even Hardison looked worried, watching the thief as she went to the bed with steady steps, repeating: normal, usual, under her breath.
“I don’t understand why are you so upset… let the girl chat a little, she’s cute and she’ll relax him a bit,” Betsy said when Parker sat on the bed and sweetly blinked, forcing Eliot to look at her.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” she said gently, but loud enough that they could hear what she was saying. “I remembered one thing I forgot to ask you yesterday. Do you, by any chance, remember what happened with Barclay’s head, where that box ended up? Nate owes me some head shrinking.”
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***
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Her face was only twenty inches away from his, and her eyes were soft and smiling. Eliot leaned back into the pillows as far as he could.
“What?” that was only thing he could say. His thoughts were too sluggish to catch at the right speed and process what she said.
“Barclay was a really, really bad, notorious guy, right? Just imagine the message for all the gangs and cartels if Nate managed to shrink his head into a little ball, and we hung it as a decoration on the front door of the apartment?”
“What?” he whispered again. This time, his mind refused to process what he heard, and he was grateful for that.
“So, do you remember where it is? I can go and get it. We can even make a themed decoration with the head for different holidays… little Santa’s cap, or a pumpkin, or pink lace for Valentine’s Day…the possibilities are endless,” she finished, smiled, and looked at him.
What’s wrong with y- he bit his lip before the words escaped; those words belonged to some other time, not here. “I don’t… I…I’m not sure what happened with it. Ask Nate.”
“That’s it? To ask Nate?” The smile faded from her face.
“I don’t know where it is.”
“And how did you cut it off?” she tried again.
“I didn’t.”
She opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again… but no sound came. He stared at her completely confused, not knowing what he was supposed to do or say.
“What’s wrong, Parker?” he asked gently. He reached with his hand but she flinched at his movement and he stopped at once. He almost forgot.
“Everything is wrong,” she whispered. It wasn’t easy to hear those words coming from her. And her eyes filled with tears. “You are wrong. You do the wrong things, you say the wrong things…” she poked him with a finger and he stood still, barely breathing. “You feel wrong.”
She jumped off the bed and marched away, leaving him clueless.
He stared blindly at the blanket for a few seconds and then forced his hand to continue typing. He waited for the second part of The Pissed One’s objections to that dirty Mexican mob and their further actions. That wasn’t a conversation that could wait.
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***
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Parker in tears painted everything around him a red hue, but Hardison had enough mind left to notice that Betsy was shaking her head, while Nate and Sophie didn’t looked upset at all. He put those thoughts behind him, trying to calm down and not react… and he managed to control himself until he saw that Eliot just continued to play with the phone. He didn’t even look at Parker when she left.
He took one more look at her eyes when she slumped on her chair, and that mixture of pain and helplessness pushed him over the edge. He slowly hoisted himself to his feet, closing the laptop with the loud click. Fuck this shit, this was too much.
He strode to the bed, feeling every muscle in his body going stiff with anger. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” his voice was a strained yell. “You just made her cry! What she has done to deserve that?”
That bastard typed five more letters and sent the message before he slowly raised his head to look at him over the phone.
“You’re asking me to explain Parker’s emotional state?” he asked quietly. “What’s wrong with you?”
Hardison just stared at him. Again that quiet voice and calm look in his eyes; he was mocking them all, for god’s sake, it was unnatural. “You behave like complete asshole since you’ve opened your eyes, but okay, I could live with that - but when Parker’s in question, I draw the line there! Hurt her again and I’ll-”
“You’ll what, Hardison?” he glanced around. “You’ll try to find something that would make this worse? Good luck with that.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you can act like a damsel in distress as much as you wish, I’m willing to wait for it to pass. Sooner or later you’ll get it together. The thing I don’t want to see is Parker being afraid to come to talk to you!”
“Well, it’s a little late for that now, don’t ya think?” his voice was bitter now, and the calmness was starting to crack. “I didn’t ask her to come. Can’t remember that I asked you either. Just go away and leave me alone. I’m busy.”
“You’re busy!” he choked an angry bark. “You know, I told Nate I’ll wait for you to be on your feet again before I knock you out for shooting her, but now I think I won’t be able to wait that long! You’re fucking busy! Are you so busy that you can't notice what are you doing to her, to all of us?”
“I was wondering when that subject would show up,” he bared his teeth in an imitation of a smile. “Tell me, what exactly is bothering you about that?”
Now was his turn to just stare at him. If he didn’t know what was bothering about shooting a friend, maybe this was screwed up beyond any repair. “You don’t get it, do you?” he hissed.
“If that question means am I sorry I shot her, the answer is no. I’m not sorry, I am…” he hesitated, and changed his sentence. “I’m not sorry that I shot her. And I would do it again, without a second thought… just like I did the first time...” He stopped to take the mask and put it on his face for a second, taking one deep breath before taking it off again. “I knew what I was doing, I calculated the pluses and minuses of it, and I decided. I never regret my decisions, Hardison. Some of them ain’t easy, and I pay for them later, but I never regret them.” He smiled again, the empty, sardonic shadow of his real smile. “You don’t have to wait for me to get up. If it would mean you’ll stop coming here, be my guest, give me your best shot. It would be a real relief, trust me.”
Hardison stared at that smile; he had never heard this bitterness in his voice before. “For what, exactly, are you punishing us?” he asked, his voice suddenly tired. He didn’t feel anger anymore, just a huge feeling of defeat. This was useless.
“What?” The surprise in his eyes couldn’t be acted, the word escaped without any edges in it.
“There must be a reason for pushing us away,” he explained slowly, then swallowed before continuing. “I know you blame me for getting shot, and it’s normal to blame us all for this mess you’re in… and for all the things you were forced to do to save us.” He took one deep breath before continuing. “I just want to know if this is something that will disappear with time, or if you won’t be able to get over it?”
The silence after his words was cut off by a strange crunching sound from the table, and he turned his head to them; Betsy was holding the bowl of popcorn and she just put a fistful of it in her mouth. Her eyes were strangely bright.
When he turned to Eliot again, he was still looking at him as if he didn’t say anything after his question.
His expression was studiously neutral. “Why should I blame you for getting shot?” This time, his voice came out with effort, he forced the words to come out.
“I forgot the cameras in the warehouse.”
He blinked. “What cameras?” he whispered.
“You went back to get them, remember?” Hardison eyed him, suddenly worried. “Are you okay? What’s-”
“I went back because I saw the men following us, and went to check them, I don’t remember what excuse I used…” Eliot stopped, his eyes lowered to the blanket. “I wasn’t forced to do anything, you moron… my decisions had nothing…” he whispered again but stopped, and Hardison quickly came closer and put the mask in his hand.
He had no idea what was happening, but Eliot looked stunned; not stunned as if his mind was blank, stunned like he was overwhelmed with too many things at the same time. Maybe he shouldn’t face him with all that punishing shit at once, he should wait for him to get a little better. But he couldn’t forget the total surprise in his eyes when he said that; if he wasn’t blaming them for all this, what the hell was really going on in there? He looked at him, feeling completely lost, noticing exactly the same look in his eyes.
The only thing he knew for certain was that he needed to continue with this. This was a rare opportunity to talk with him, really talk.
“I need those answers, Eliot,” he said seriously. “I can wait for them as long as you need, but-” he stopped when he shook his head, taking the mask off.
“I’m not punishing you for anything,” he had regained his voice back, it wasn’t the whisper anymore. “And I certainly don’t blame you for anything.” And that voice was soft and even again.
“Nope, don’t do that shit again,” Hardison said watching him disappearing once more in front of his eyes. If he closed up now, for whatever reason, he wouldn’t be able to drag him back. Fuck, he had to yell to get the normal response.
“I’m not doing anything,” Eliot said slowly. He rubbed his eyes with a tired, careful move, and his mouth curved into thin, flat smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve told you the answers, right? Now, if there’s something else-”
Hardison hissed in annoyance. “Stop looking through me, I need you to talk-”
“-you need to ask, we can do it later. I have to think, Hardison.”
“Eliot, stop it!” he almost yelled again, but it resulted just in another absent smile and further shutting down.
“And I have to reply to messages,” Eliot continued in an undisturbed explanatory tone as if he didn’t say anything. “I’ve told you I’m busy.”
Hardison took a long breath and decided in a second; Eliot was still holding the phone in his right hand and he smacked it, sending the pone flying over the bed and into the table. He was ready to get punched in a second, he was ready for the anger and the continuation of the quarrel, anything just to stop the spiral into blatant emptiness… but nothing prepared him for the fear in his eyes. Eliot drew one long breath, staying completely still while a flicker of anger flew over his eyes in one moment. In another second it was replaced with fear. Hardison forgot to take a step back, staring into his eyes.
“Move away,” Eliot whispered, carefully moving both arms, placing them over the bandages. He wasn’t looking at him, he stared somewhere behind him. “Please, just go away. We’ll talk later.”
“Eliot…”
“No,” he shook his head. “Later.”
He sighed, picked up the phone and put it on the bed near him.
“Thank you.”
“Do you know you’ve said ‘thank you’ nearly twenty times since you woke up?”
“Thirty seven,” Parker’s voice trailed in from the table.
Eliot just shook his head again. No response. And that horrible fear was still coloring his eyes. Hardison turned around and went away, passing beside them at the table, leaving the apartment. He carefully closed the door behind him, resisting the urge to slam them with all the strength he had.
He desperately needed something that would clear this shit out. And he needed a drink.
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***
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Eliot thought about the ways that could make this situation more complicated than it already was, and he came up with only Villacorta’s moving in with his tooth brush. Or maybe, don Lazzara. No, both of them together. That would add a nice touch to all this shit.
It took almost five minutes until he was able to relax his arms enough to lower them down on the blanket and to take the phone. They were still shaking badly. In spite of a pounding headache, he was pretty satisfied with leaving Hardison alive, though he wasn’t sure what would happen in the first second. Only when Hardison left did he manage to analyze his feelings - it wasn’t rage, thank god, it was annoyance, not so different from his usual reactions on the hacker’s stupid moves. And he didn’t want to kill him in the moment he threw his phone, he just wanted to growl and kick his butt with his leg - his position was perfect for a round kick. If he was able to support his weight with his arms, which he wasn’t.
His decision to avoid sleeping when they were near and unprotected now seemed as a bad idea. He could barely start thinking about all these new details without getting completely lost. What fucking blaming them, for what? He rubbed his eyes trying to concentrate. Why the hell he should blame someone else for his decisions? That concept was totally strange to him.
Hardison said that he was pushing them away from him - another thing that sent a wave of pain through his skull when he started to decipher what that meant. If they thought he was mad at them, for god knows what stupid reason they’d made up for that, that would mess up all his conclusions about their behavior. Now he had a few more things to calculate into their moves, and it was already too fucked up to understand it. Great, he needed more of confusing shit, really.
He sent two messages to The Pissed One before he gathered enough courage to think about the possibility that their behavior was strange only because they thought he was strange and mad at them… but he didn’t let that thought take root. He didn’t dare let it stay too long… not without any further evidence.
Before he continued to think in that direction, he had to see what the hell they were doing, carefully hiding it from him. He checked the committee at the table; Sophie and Betsy were talking to Parker - one of Betsy’s shoe was on the table and they were pointing to the parts as if they were trying to explain the functioning of it. Nate’s shoes were on the table too, but Sophie moved his legs away - he was rocking in the chair, staring directly at the bed with an unreadable half-smile that made him nervous. He never liked that particular smile.
He averted his eyes from Nate and leaned deeper into the pillows. If he didn’t kill the next idiot who came to disturb him, maybe he would allow himself to sleep. But not now, he had work to do. He checked the messages and then went through the impossibly complicated menus of Hardison’s phone, which he cloned when the hacker came near the bed.
Still feeling the steady gaze that never left his every move.
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***
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The short glance that Nate and Sophie exchanged while he was passing by the table reminded Hardison of their knowing more about this shit.
He passed through the bar without stopping to drink something, and went straight to Lucille, parked behind the building. He had to see what they knew - the time for paying attention to the trust issues was long gone.
It took him almost half an hour to dig up the remains of the voice tapes from Estrella; he was lucky that nothing was done on that computer after they’d left the corridor and entered the van, and nothing was written over them. He quickly searched back to the moment when Nate asked him to cut himself off, but just to be sure, he went a minute before that, when they went into that office by the stairs. Yes, Eliot definitely said he was quitting, the first thing on the list, finishing with breaking of Nate’s arms if he tried to touch him or come closer. But why the hell did he try to stop him from getting out of there, quitting or not? That didn’t make any sense - though, he was delirious and completely lost, that was why he ignored it at the first place, while he was listening to it.
Yet, it wasn’t the first statement of a similar sort, he remembered. The last phone call with Eliot was revealing a lot, too, and they were all listening to it in Lucille. From this perspective, Eliot’s asking Nate not to tell them what he had done, and to keep them under the assumption that he died somewhere else, not connected to the team, told him that Eliot thought they wouldn’t be able to deal with his doings, and that he died while doing that for them. But, he wasn’t dead, he was with them again, though he tried to stop Nate from taking him out of that office… and no matter how deep in shock he was, he had to know that leaving him there would be a death sentence. Damn. As the pieces slowly started to fall into the right places, Hardison was less and less eager to actually listen to the part that would explain everything.
Maybe Sophie was right, and some things were not for everybody to know. The two of them knew it, and they didn’t seem frightened by the situation, they were just worried, and it should show him that all this shit could end up with a happy end after all. They would act and do something if crisis was about to explode, right?
Or they gave up, said one tiny scared voice inside his head, because they knew there was no use fighting already lost battles. Nate was out of everything connected to Eliot for two days.
Hardison sighed, pissed because thinking that should calm his fears down ended with a much worse fear than he expected.
Before he could change his mind, he played the entire conversation from their entering the office, all the lines. Clear voices and the sounds of shooting brought him back into those stressful fifteen minutes of pure fear, and his heart was already thumping in his throat when he came to the part when Nate cut them off.
Yep, he shouldn’t listen to it.
Eliot’s voice was strangely flat when he talked about the dead in the corridor: flat but full of despair that was leaking in his every word. Hardison’s heart sank. He was too busy to actually acknowledge all the dots as people, people who died in that shooting. But Eliot kept track all the time. All those people died because he started the fight, and he knew it. He fucking felt it, and that was tearing him apart.
It got even worse when he continued about Marco’s Tavern, Rojas and the Mexicans that died there, and something clenched in Hardison’s gut when he finally realized the whole burden that laid on his back. It wasn’t just an effect of the shock… it was that whole night, all the dead people, that crushed on him at the end and he didn’t want to, he couldn’t, continue with all that torment, and giving up and dying was the easiest escape from it.
“Let me go, Nate. Everything I touch dies. I will kill you all.”
Hardison let go of a breath he didn’t recall holding. He listened to the long silence after those words, completely understanding why even Nate couldn’t say anything to this.
He buried his face in his hands, feeling his mind horribly empty of every coherent thought, he felt only the need to, to… fuck, that whisper was nightmare material. Torn apart, defeated, and so fucking scared.
Oh, Sophie, you were so right. He shouldn’t know all this. What use was it that he now knew what caused that fear in Eliot’s eyes when he hit his phone? What was the use of knowing why he refused to sleep when they were near, why he was tormented every time they came within his reach, trying to hold himself together and not falling apart and killing them? Why he was so desperately trying to control himself and put distance between them… and finally, why he was just waiting for the opportunity to leave?
He was a fool when he thought he blamed them for this shit; nope, Eliot Spencer wouldn’t think that for a second. He was cursed with the deadly ability to kill, and at the same time to not be able to diminish that act. He knew exactly what he had done, knew and felt all the consequences. Full responsibility, or nothing. He even told him just that, when he spoke about shooting Parker; his decisions. He was paying for them, but he wasn’t regretting them. Eliot would rather think that they blamed him for all that death, not vice versa.
He had no idea how long he had been sitting in the dark van, lost in the battle of pain and guilt. Yep, maybe Eliot wasn’t blaming them, but it surely didn’t mean they couldn’t blame themselves. There wasn’t any way to repay what he had done for them - as always, when words were empty and insufficient, nothing would be said.
He wiped his eyes and pressed both palms to his temples; he had to get it together and return to the apartment, and he dreaded it, knowing he was helpless, that there was nothing he could do to solve it. To help. Demons were very fastidious; the stronger the victim, the stronger the demon. He couldn’t quite imagine how one could beat entire horde of demons, waiting in line, but he knew only one person who would, maybe, be able to do it.
He searched through the memory of the last days, trying to find any sign that would tell him Eliot was fighting already, but he couldn’t tell - all he saw was that damn retreat from everything. It might be too early to expect a fight from a half dead man, but now he knew what he would look for when he got back.
And maybe he couldn’t help, but he surely could reduce the little things, give him time to concentrate on real problems. All that shit about the fear that he would kill them had to go… if that was a real danger, they would have been dead ten times over in those days. Who was blaming whom, and who was ditching whom, too - stupid little misunderstandings that he figured were only hindering factors, they were drawing his attention away from dealing with the bigger ones.
If anyone could go through this and remain sane, that was Eliot. He had to have trust in him.
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***
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Nothing changed when he returned to the apartment. They were all still sitting, Eliot was busy with the phone, and only the new thing was a burning pain in his gut and a lump in his throat that he couldn’t get rid of.
The table acknowledged his return with glances, except Nate. He didn’t look at him, he was playing solitaire on his laptop.
“I’ll need that,” he said standing by the table, and Nate just turned the laptop to him, eying him with a dry smile.
“Be my guest,” he said conversationally, but it couldn’t erase the penetrating concentration in his eyes. He was reading him like an open book, there was no point in hiding anything.
Then he realized, finally… Nate wasn’t worried about the little things, he knew they would deal with it… he was waiting in the background, waiting for the bigger demons to show up. He knew them, oh hell, he knew them well. That thought was strangely comforting, and he was almost able to smile.
“Betsy, he has to sleep, right?” Hardison asked the nurse while going to pick up laptop cables.
“Desperately. Why?”
“Because he obviously isn’t tired enough,” he smirked, took the laptop and went to the bed.
The alien was sitting comfortably in Eliot’s head again, he saw that dreadful calmness when he raised his eyes to look at him. He plugged in the laptop, going around the bed, noticing him stiffing when he went behind him and he was tempted to continue with that, to increase his unease to the point he would have to admit that even totally nervous he wouldn’t kill him, but Eliot was too weak for that.
He returned in front of him and opened the laptop. “Now, move your lazy ass to the right,” he said, taking off his shoes.
The calmness was destroyed in a second. “What are you do-” his eyes were instantly alert, but Hardison didn’t came here to negotiate. He grinned and sat in the bed beside him, resting his back on the pillows.
“You can move over to make room, or you can snuggle, your choice,” he grinned when Eliot withdrew as far from him as he could, with a hissed curse. His arms were again over the bandages and the tension that radiated from him was stronger than a wall between them.
Hardison started typing, listening to his breathing, quick, shallow, controlled breaths that were on the edge of hyperventilation. It wasn’t that Eliot didn’t have anything to say, he couldn’t, too occupied with control and fear. Perfect. Without a word, he put the mask between them. “Now, you’re obviously bored, and playing games on the phone is useless. I was thinking about a Star Wars marathon, to finally define all differences between Star Trek, but since we have been separated for the last few days, a short briefing would be much cleverer.”
He placed the laptop in his lap, turning it slightly so Eliot could see it. “May I present you the blueprints of Massachusetts General? I can explain in detail everything that it took to find them, all the versions of it, and connect them into the one that was the most relevant, but I don’t want to risk you walking out of here, so we shall agree, simply, that it required fucking brilliance to get them, okay?” he sneaked a sideways glance at him. “Actual looking at the screen would be a useful contribution on your part.”
“This is not a good time, Hardison.” The anguish leaked into his leveled voice, through gritted teeth. He kept his gaze in front of him.
“It is. You’re not sleeping and resting, so we can do something useful instead. This is a detailed display of the apartment on Blossom Street, with the view to your window. I thought about buying a telescope at one point. Did Betsy tell you that you woke up right at the moment I was placing the camera in your room, and that I had to crawl under the bed to hide? She was a diversion, I sneaked out on all fours… poor Eric was stunned.”
Now Eliot looked at him… not at the screen, not sightlessly in front of him, he turned his head.
“Yep, I know what you are thinking now… what a wasted chance to stop that hospital hide and seek at a very beginning, right?”
“I woke up because a zombie was staring at me.” His voice was still restrained, but at least he answered. “Interesting… message.”
“I wasn’t staring, I was checking your readings. Where did you come up with zombies?” Hardison frowned, thinking. “Maybe I’ll need to reconsider my idea to make you watch The Walking Dead. It’s a story about a guy who gets shot and ends up in hospital, and when he wakes up he finds himself in a zombie apocalypse, the whole hospital full of zombies…” he glanced at his eyes, the message was clear. “No? Yep, I thought so. Okay, no zombies,” he sighed and pressed few more keys, then remembered something. “But I wasn’t the first visit - do you know what I have found duct taped under your bed? Your kitchen knives. Parker was first.”
“In fact, Parker was the second,” Sophie exclaimed from the kitchen. “Do you want some tea?”
“That would be great, thank you,” Hardison said.
“I do remember that I strictly forbid any visits.” Nate’s murmuring was barely a sound.
The two new voices messed up the first signs of his relaxation, Hardison noticed, he was tensed again, looking at the table as if he expected they would start to gather all around them.
“Sophie, don’t hurry with that tea, we’ll first do this, okay?”
She got the message and just nodded, not speaking again, but Parker was never good at reading unsaid things. She came to the bed with a bowl of popcorn, looking at them with a clear frown. “I still didn’t forgive you for removing them,” she murmured. “He might have needed them at some point, and what then?”
Eliot didn’t visibly react to her approaching, he just lowered his eyes to the blanket. Hardison quickly checked his breathing - it was little slower, but the tension was still present in his every muscle. He couldn’t say if he was retreating again and this silence wasn’t a good sign at all. If he refused to talk and participate, there would be almost nothing to do to make him return again. He stayed silent, not sure what to say for a moment, when he noticed that Eliot wasn’t simply looking into the blanket… he was burning the holes in it.
“The second day in the hospital.” Eliot’s voice was hoarse and with a very vicious edge when he slowly raised his eyes from the blanket. “Can someone, please explain to me how my knives… came to be at the hospital from the apartment that was occupied with Chileans… who were still waiting for you to come?”
Uh -oh.
Sophie quickly pointed at Parker, at the same time that Hardison spoke. “She did it.”
Parker stopped in the middle of the step and swallowed the popcorn, blinking. “What? We needed the stuff. That’s what I do. Nobody noticed me.”
Hardison hid the smile; this was the first time Eliot spoke to all of them and asked something, for three days he was just replying to their questions. There was a slight change in the kind of Eliot’s tension… he was pretty sure he wasn’t now thinking about the possibility that he could snap and kill them, he was simply… mad. A man could count on Parker to set the things right.
“You just don’t do things like that alone, Parker!” It was still a whisper, but it had a lot of snarl in it.
“I did,” she shrugged and pushed the bowl into Eliot - he had to unclench his grip on the bandages to catch the bowl, and Hardison realized he had an ally who knew very well what she was doing.
Parker stepped onto the bed, and stood for a second looking down on them. “Cute,” she smiled and walked between the two of them, carefully. She sat on the head rest behind them, placing her feet on the pillows between their shoulders.
Eliot put the mask on his face. Hardison cleared his throat, suddenly not so certain about her decisions. It was one thing to have him near, with a laptop, but someone behind him, and above him, must have been unbearable for his fragile control. His knuckles were completely white, and bowl was in danger of breaking at any second.
“What… what is the static of this bed, Hardison?” Eliot asked quietly, and Hardison cursed. The bed was on wheels, and they were all at one end of it, with Parker as ballast on the rearmost end.
“Parker, don’t make any sudden moves. We should be okay if we just…sit.”
A green sock slowly reached forward between their shoulders and pressed the screen. “There. You have a mistake in the blueprints - that corridor ends with a storage room, it has no entrance to the stairs.” Hardison watched the stopping of Eliot’s breathing when green thing moved just few inches from his face; one muscle in his jaw was tilting. Parker obviously noticed that too, because she giggled and waved with her toes. “Don’t worry, I won’t tickle you… yet.”
Eliot’s response was a muffled hiss.
“Let’s don’t do anything that can turn us over, okay?” Hardison elbowed her other foot; it was enough for now.
She carefully bent forward and took the bowl. “Okay, you’re right. Betsy would bitch at us for hours.” That caused them all to flinch and glance cautiously to the table.
“It’s a good thing I was shot, and not poisoned or irradiated.” Eliot’s interjection sounded strange, said casually, in a strange discrepancy with a posture that was still stiff. “How would you crawl out of the room in hazmat suit?”
Hardison froze and his fingers on the keyboard stopped for a second. He glanced at Eliot. Of course he was looking at his fingers.
“What if’s are useless.” He cleared his throat again.
“I prefer orange ones,” Eliot murmured, looking at the screen with interest. Hardison decided to ignore that interjection - it was safer than starting to think about what the chances were, what a coincidence it was for Eliot to start talking about orange hazmat suits so shortly after…
“Have you ever wondered what happened to your knife holster?” he asked sweetly, and this time two men flinched. He smirked at Nate and turned to Eliot who was eying him cautiously.
“We’ll come to that point eventually. Before that, here is a short report from the first day, before you woke up. Parker, jump in at any point…figuratively, not literally, please.”
Yep, this was going to work, he promised himself, smiling as he typed, explaining the position of the cameras. Just as long like Parker didn’t try to force feed Eliot with the popcorn, as long they didn’t end up on the floor squashed into jelly by the monster bed… they were going to live through this shit. This time, together.
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Characters: Nate Ford, Eliot Spencer, Alec Hardison, Parker, Sophie Deveraux, Patrick Bonnano
Fandom: Leverage
Spoilers: The Lonely Hearts Club Job, The Boy's night out Job
warnings: Dead people, language, violence, medical bullsh*t, extreme violence in later chapters, and extreme angst
Disclaimer: I do not own blah blah blah
Special, special, special, special thanks to trappercreekd for Betaing :D
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***
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Nate and Parker went out with Bonnano, convincing him they were going only to the grocery store. Hardison was at his laptop, all communication was set at the lowest sound so Eliot couldn’t figure out he was listening and directing them, and Sophie was twice as concentrated not to reveal that she had an earbud. She was concerned he would guess it by her posture, and Betsy’s changing his bandages became useful as a distraction when he put down the phone and started to look around, noticing their long absence. Betsy didn’t know where they were, but she recognized his growing tension as time passed, and successfully diverted his attention.
He was sitting up while Betsy worked on the bandages and Sophie came closer, leaning on the shelf to hide Hardison from his sight; the hacker was typing at work speed, not game speed, and he had the we-are-in-the-middle-of-a-complicated-con aura around him.
She thought Eliot would ask her about their absence and she prepared a calm smile when he looked at her, but it froze on her face when she realized he didn’t see her. “Erm, Betsy…” she started just at the moment his eyelids fell closed and he swayed. Betsy caught him before he collapsed. Sophie quickly came closer.
“Go to his left side and hold him upright.” Betsy was boiling, and that scared her even more. She quickly connected heart monitor back. The beeping was slow and regular this time. “Now, look directly at the monitor and track any changes, okay? Don’t look anywhere else.” Betsy was doing something while she was speaking, and it took all her control not to look to see what. She counted the seconds as she counted the heartbeat, calculating the rhythm, and before she came to twenty, Betsy was wrapping the bandage around his back.
“What have you done?” Sophie whispered though she knew he couldn’t hear her; his head was lowered, he was completely out.
“The bleeding stopped during the night. I waited for a few more hours to be sure, but now I removed the chest tube, he doesn’t need it anymore. It’s a simple procedure.” By the time she finished talking, she was done with the bandages, and she eased him back to lie down, putting the mask back on his face.
“And why are you so mad then?”
“He’s doing exactly the same shit as he did in Mass Gen,” she said dryly. “He’s pushing himself beyond any reasonable limit, and he’s exhausting himself further. And trust me, now is not the time for that.”
“Morphine is still not an option?”
“It would lower his BP, I won’t risk that. He’s getting small doses of other analgesics through the IV, but it isn’t enough. He should have been sleeping for 20 hours a day. He hasn’t slept the last night, and this morning he pretended to sleep four times. If he continues with this he will continue to pass out, and he is too weak for that. The body shuts down when abused, he could slip into a coma the next time. The sleep heals, passing out doesn’t.”
Sophie stayed silent, listening via earbud to Nate whose conversation about the National Response Plan with the Assistant Secretary of Home Security Health Affairs was suddenly filled with unusual pauses as he listened to Betsy. Hardison was tapping his fingers on the table, she could hear that through the comm, and live.
Betsy was thinking, and she finally sighed and turned off the beeping, obviously deciding it would upset him further, and not be useful. She raised the upper part of the bed, lifting him into an almost sitting position, and Sophie pulled the blankets over his shoulders. He was cold to touch. And he looked so much younger when unconscious, she noticed, feeling an ache in her heart; it wasn’t fair that only passing out could erase the worry and tension from his face.
Betsy was watching her, she could sense her hawk eyes on her every move.
“I will not disturb him, Betsy,” she whispered lightly, touching his face with the back of her fingers; she could do that now without thinking about his reactions. It would be much easier if cuddling him, and everybody, could make all of this disappear.
Betsy said nothing.
Sophie silently went back to the table. He didn’t have the finger clamps anymore. The mask was on his face only occasionally. He didn’t have the chest tube, and with the bleeding stopped, there was no need for transfusions. And he needed only three seconds to disconnect the remaining IV tubes from his hands.
Time wasn’t on their side anymore.
“Nate, we need to talk,” she said in the earbud.
“Of course, Madame Secretary,” his smile warmed his voice. “I do agree that the Posse Comitatus Act does not cover these circumstances, and you are right - this is a Joint Special Operations Command line of work. I couldn’t sum it up better myself.”
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***
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Eliot regained consciousness - and he wasn’t sleeping, of course, he stared at the phone - when Nate and Parker returned an hour later, loaded down with bags full of groceries, quietly arguing about stealing apples from the market.
There was still a lot of work to do, so Nate prolonged the talk with Sophie; he knew what she would tell him. She wasn’t pressing either, some things were understood even without being said.
The first sign of the impending storm was Parker, sitting innocently on the kitchen counter, with a bowl of cereal in her lap. She was listening to Sophie and Betsy talking about shoes, while Nate and Hardison were going through different Boston maps on the laptop, and nothing would look suspicious if Nate didn’t hear a strangely loud crunching sound every time the thief grabbed into the bowl.
He glanced at her to check on her; she was frowning, but he couldn’t tell if it was because she tried to understand what the fuss about shoes was, or something new was bothering her.
Hardison and Sophie were tense and angry, worried to the point of explosion, and it grew with every hour that passed, after their every visit, but Parker wasn’t angry because of Eliot’s polite withdrawal. She was becoming more silent and darker every time she sneaked to check on him. She wasn’t trying to speak to him at all, though she heard everything he was saying to the others.
Nate got up to get more coffee when a piece of cereal jumped from her bowl when she reached into it, missing the laptop by an inch and falling into the popcorn on the table, and he used the opportunity to look at her bowl over her shoulder. Fuck. He went perfectly still, holding his breath, then carefully reached forward and slowly took the fork from her hand. She glared at him, but he smiled and gave her a spoon instead, taking the fork away.
He went back to the same position and from there he could see that the thief might be listening to the shoe conversation, but her eyes were surely going over their heads, to the bed on the other side.
“What’s troubling you, Parker?” he asked gently; the shoe conversation abruptly stopped.
The thief started swinging her legs, and said nothing.
“Parker?”
She hissed and stabbed in the bowl, but left it on the counter beside her. “He is sexting with Tapia,” she said quietly.
Hardison’s coffee ended up on the laptop monitor, in one explosive burst. Nate looked at Sophie’s aghast stare and sighed.
“Care to explain?”
“They've been texting like teenagers for almost an hour. And he smiled five times! Have you ever seen him smiling while texting with someone? Have you ever seen him texting before, by the way? It must be that sexting thing, there’s no other explanation.” She turned wide, worried eyes on him. “Tapia sent him a picture of some white building with palms, explaining something about the gambling procedures there, and Eliot replied with: ‘Don’t send this to anyone else; the registration plates on the parked cars are clearly visible, and you’re supposed to be hiding. How you survived in the cartel world continues to astound me’. It’s, like, four times longer than any sentences he said to us in two days!”
“How could you-” Nate stopped the sentence; she was the only one who could sneak up on Eliot even when he was well. “Look, he is working. He is using Tapia to confirm Villacorta’s location, and he's probably getting more useful information from him.”
“But Nate, he sounded nice the whole morning!” Parker lowered her voice to an upset whisper. “When he talks to us, he sounds just like he sounded while speaking to Villacorta on that terrace! We are now business to him, not a pleasure. He acts like we don’t exist anymore, while he speaks he looks through us!”
“You have to give him more time, Parker. He isn’t able to think completely clear yet, he is still confused and weak. It’s only been one day since we were sure he would live… he can’t-”
“I’m not talking about how strong his voice is, I’m talking about what’s in it!” Parker hissed.
“She is right, I’ve been watching that same shit the entire day, and the better part of yesterday. And I don’t like it at all,” Hardison jumped in. “I’m worried about that phone, too - we all know what he did with it in the hospital. I’m thinking about putting a camera behind his shoulder, or put motion detectors around the bed, or-”
“Have you, people, actually heard of the means of communication that’s called talk?” Betsy was looking at them like they all had a few spare heads. “You know, you might be very successful in your line of work, but I must say, you suck at common human relations. You are completely disabled in that field. You should have a car sticker, for god’s sake!”
“You’re right,” Parker blinked. “We have to talk to him. Something normal, usual, that will result in his normal reply. If he snaps and growls at us, it would be normal, right?”
Nate buried his face in his hand. “Betsy, I don’t think that’s a good idea, you don’t actually know her that well and I must-”
“It is,” Parker climbed down from the counter. Her eyes were glowing again. “I can do it. Normal. Usual. ”
Nate exchanged a look with Sophie; she was frozen, for a second unable to think of anything that would stop her. Even Hardison looked worried, watching the thief as she went to the bed with steady steps, repeating: normal, usual, under her breath.
“I don’t understand why are you so upset… let the girl chat a little, she’s cute and she’ll relax him a bit,” Betsy said when Parker sat on the bed and sweetly blinked, forcing Eliot to look at her.
“I’m glad you’re awake,” she said gently, but loud enough that they could hear what she was saying. “I remembered one thing I forgot to ask you yesterday. Do you, by any chance, remember what happened with Barclay’s head, where that box ended up? Nate owes me some head shrinking.”
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***
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Her face was only twenty inches away from his, and her eyes were soft and smiling. Eliot leaned back into the pillows as far as he could.
“What?” that was only thing he could say. His thoughts were too sluggish to catch at the right speed and process what she said.
“Barclay was a really, really bad, notorious guy, right? Just imagine the message for all the gangs and cartels if Nate managed to shrink his head into a little ball, and we hung it as a decoration on the front door of the apartment?”
“What?” he whispered again. This time, his mind refused to process what he heard, and he was grateful for that.
“So, do you remember where it is? I can go and get it. We can even make a themed decoration with the head for different holidays… little Santa’s cap, or a pumpkin, or pink lace for Valentine’s Day…the possibilities are endless,” she finished, smiled, and looked at him.
What’s wrong with y- he bit his lip before the words escaped; those words belonged to some other time, not here. “I don’t… I…I’m not sure what happened with it. Ask Nate.”
“That’s it? To ask Nate?” The smile faded from her face.
“I don’t know where it is.”
“And how did you cut it off?” she tried again.
“I didn’t.”
She opened her mouth, shut it, opened it again… but no sound came. He stared at her completely confused, not knowing what he was supposed to do or say.
“What’s wrong, Parker?” he asked gently. He reached with his hand but she flinched at his movement and he stopped at once. He almost forgot.
“Everything is wrong,” she whispered. It wasn’t easy to hear those words coming from her. And her eyes filled with tears. “You are wrong. You do the wrong things, you say the wrong things…” she poked him with a finger and he stood still, barely breathing. “You feel wrong.”
She jumped off the bed and marched away, leaving him clueless.
He stared blindly at the blanket for a few seconds and then forced his hand to continue typing. He waited for the second part of The Pissed One’s objections to that dirty Mexican mob and their further actions. That wasn’t a conversation that could wait.
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***
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Parker in tears painted everything around him a red hue, but Hardison had enough mind left to notice that Betsy was shaking her head, while Nate and Sophie didn’t looked upset at all. He put those thoughts behind him, trying to calm down and not react… and he managed to control himself until he saw that Eliot just continued to play with the phone. He didn’t even look at Parker when she left.
He took one more look at her eyes when she slumped on her chair, and that mixture of pain and helplessness pushed him over the edge. He slowly hoisted himself to his feet, closing the laptop with the loud click. Fuck this shit, this was too much.
He strode to the bed, feeling every muscle in his body going stiff with anger. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” his voice was a strained yell. “You just made her cry! What she has done to deserve that?”
That bastard typed five more letters and sent the message before he slowly raised his head to look at him over the phone.
“You’re asking me to explain Parker’s emotional state?” he asked quietly. “What’s wrong with you?”
Hardison just stared at him. Again that quiet voice and calm look in his eyes; he was mocking them all, for god’s sake, it was unnatural. “You behave like complete asshole since you’ve opened your eyes, but okay, I could live with that - but when Parker’s in question, I draw the line there! Hurt her again and I’ll-”
“You’ll what, Hardison?” he glanced around. “You’ll try to find something that would make this worse? Good luck with that.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you can act like a damsel in distress as much as you wish, I’m willing to wait for it to pass. Sooner or later you’ll get it together. The thing I don’t want to see is Parker being afraid to come to talk to you!”
“Well, it’s a little late for that now, don’t ya think?” his voice was bitter now, and the calmness was starting to crack. “I didn’t ask her to come. Can’t remember that I asked you either. Just go away and leave me alone. I’m busy.”
“You’re busy!” he choked an angry bark. “You know, I told Nate I’ll wait for you to be on your feet again before I knock you out for shooting her, but now I think I won’t be able to wait that long! You’re fucking busy! Are you so busy that you can't notice what are you doing to her, to all of us?”
“I was wondering when that subject would show up,” he bared his teeth in an imitation of a smile. “Tell me, what exactly is bothering you about that?”
Now was his turn to just stare at him. If he didn’t know what was bothering about shooting a friend, maybe this was screwed up beyond any repair. “You don’t get it, do you?” he hissed.
“If that question means am I sorry I shot her, the answer is no. I’m not sorry, I am…” he hesitated, and changed his sentence. “I’m not sorry that I shot her. And I would do it again, without a second thought… just like I did the first time...” He stopped to take the mask and put it on his face for a second, taking one deep breath before taking it off again. “I knew what I was doing, I calculated the pluses and minuses of it, and I decided. I never regret my decisions, Hardison. Some of them ain’t easy, and I pay for them later, but I never regret them.” He smiled again, the empty, sardonic shadow of his real smile. “You don’t have to wait for me to get up. If it would mean you’ll stop coming here, be my guest, give me your best shot. It would be a real relief, trust me.”
Hardison stared at that smile; he had never heard this bitterness in his voice before. “For what, exactly, are you punishing us?” he asked, his voice suddenly tired. He didn’t feel anger anymore, just a huge feeling of defeat. This was useless.
“What?” The surprise in his eyes couldn’t be acted, the word escaped without any edges in it.
“There must be a reason for pushing us away,” he explained slowly, then swallowed before continuing. “I know you blame me for getting shot, and it’s normal to blame us all for this mess you’re in… and for all the things you were forced to do to save us.” He took one deep breath before continuing. “I just want to know if this is something that will disappear with time, or if you won’t be able to get over it?”
The silence after his words was cut off by a strange crunching sound from the table, and he turned his head to them; Betsy was holding the bowl of popcorn and she just put a fistful of it in her mouth. Her eyes were strangely bright.
When he turned to Eliot again, he was still looking at him as if he didn’t say anything after his question.
His expression was studiously neutral. “Why should I blame you for getting shot?” This time, his voice came out with effort, he forced the words to come out.
“I forgot the cameras in the warehouse.”
He blinked. “What cameras?” he whispered.
“You went back to get them, remember?” Hardison eyed him, suddenly worried. “Are you okay? What’s-”
“I went back because I saw the men following us, and went to check them, I don’t remember what excuse I used…” Eliot stopped, his eyes lowered to the blanket. “I wasn’t forced to do anything, you moron… my decisions had nothing…” he whispered again but stopped, and Hardison quickly came closer and put the mask in his hand.
He had no idea what was happening, but Eliot looked stunned; not stunned as if his mind was blank, stunned like he was overwhelmed with too many things at the same time. Maybe he shouldn’t face him with all that punishing shit at once, he should wait for him to get a little better. But he couldn’t forget the total surprise in his eyes when he said that; if he wasn’t blaming them for all this, what the hell was really going on in there? He looked at him, feeling completely lost, noticing exactly the same look in his eyes.
The only thing he knew for certain was that he needed to continue with this. This was a rare opportunity to talk with him, really talk.
“I need those answers, Eliot,” he said seriously. “I can wait for them as long as you need, but-” he stopped when he shook his head, taking the mask off.
“I’m not punishing you for anything,” he had regained his voice back, it wasn’t the whisper anymore. “And I certainly don’t blame you for anything.” And that voice was soft and even again.
“Nope, don’t do that shit again,” Hardison said watching him disappearing once more in front of his eyes. If he closed up now, for whatever reason, he wouldn’t be able to drag him back. Fuck, he had to yell to get the normal response.
“I’m not doing anything,” Eliot said slowly. He rubbed his eyes with a tired, careful move, and his mouth curved into thin, flat smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I’ve told you the answers, right? Now, if there’s something else-”
Hardison hissed in annoyance. “Stop looking through me, I need you to talk-”
“-you need to ask, we can do it later. I have to think, Hardison.”
“Eliot, stop it!” he almost yelled again, but it resulted just in another absent smile and further shutting down.
“And I have to reply to messages,” Eliot continued in an undisturbed explanatory tone as if he didn’t say anything. “I’ve told you I’m busy.”
Hardison took a long breath and decided in a second; Eliot was still holding the phone in his right hand and he smacked it, sending the pone flying over the bed and into the table. He was ready to get punched in a second, he was ready for the anger and the continuation of the quarrel, anything just to stop the spiral into blatant emptiness… but nothing prepared him for the fear in his eyes. Eliot drew one long breath, staying completely still while a flicker of anger flew over his eyes in one moment. In another second it was replaced with fear. Hardison forgot to take a step back, staring into his eyes.
“Move away,” Eliot whispered, carefully moving both arms, placing them over the bandages. He wasn’t looking at him, he stared somewhere behind him. “Please, just go away. We’ll talk later.”
“Eliot…”
“No,” he shook his head. “Later.”
He sighed, picked up the phone and put it on the bed near him.
“Thank you.”
“Do you know you’ve said ‘thank you’ nearly twenty times since you woke up?”
“Thirty seven,” Parker’s voice trailed in from the table.
Eliot just shook his head again. No response. And that horrible fear was still coloring his eyes. Hardison turned around and went away, passing beside them at the table, leaving the apartment. He carefully closed the door behind him, resisting the urge to slam them with all the strength he had.
He desperately needed something that would clear this shit out. And he needed a drink.
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***
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Eliot thought about the ways that could make this situation more complicated than it already was, and he came up with only Villacorta’s moving in with his tooth brush. Or maybe, don Lazzara. No, both of them together. That would add a nice touch to all this shit.
It took almost five minutes until he was able to relax his arms enough to lower them down on the blanket and to take the phone. They were still shaking badly. In spite of a pounding headache, he was pretty satisfied with leaving Hardison alive, though he wasn’t sure what would happen in the first second. Only when Hardison left did he manage to analyze his feelings - it wasn’t rage, thank god, it was annoyance, not so different from his usual reactions on the hacker’s stupid moves. And he didn’t want to kill him in the moment he threw his phone, he just wanted to growl and kick his butt with his leg - his position was perfect for a round kick. If he was able to support his weight with his arms, which he wasn’t.
His decision to avoid sleeping when they were near and unprotected now seemed as a bad idea. He could barely start thinking about all these new details without getting completely lost. What fucking blaming them, for what? He rubbed his eyes trying to concentrate. Why the hell he should blame someone else for his decisions? That concept was totally strange to him.
Hardison said that he was pushing them away from him - another thing that sent a wave of pain through his skull when he started to decipher what that meant. If they thought he was mad at them, for god knows what stupid reason they’d made up for that, that would mess up all his conclusions about their behavior. Now he had a few more things to calculate into their moves, and it was already too fucked up to understand it. Great, he needed more of confusing shit, really.
He sent two messages to The Pissed One before he gathered enough courage to think about the possibility that their behavior was strange only because they thought he was strange and mad at them… but he didn’t let that thought take root. He didn’t dare let it stay too long… not without any further evidence.
Before he continued to think in that direction, he had to see what the hell they were doing, carefully hiding it from him. He checked the committee at the table; Sophie and Betsy were talking to Parker - one of Betsy’s shoe was on the table and they were pointing to the parts as if they were trying to explain the functioning of it. Nate’s shoes were on the table too, but Sophie moved his legs away - he was rocking in the chair, staring directly at the bed with an unreadable half-smile that made him nervous. He never liked that particular smile.
He averted his eyes from Nate and leaned deeper into the pillows. If he didn’t kill the next idiot who came to disturb him, maybe he would allow himself to sleep. But not now, he had work to do. He checked the messages and then went through the impossibly complicated menus of Hardison’s phone, which he cloned when the hacker came near the bed.
Still feeling the steady gaze that never left his every move.
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***
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The short glance that Nate and Sophie exchanged while he was passing by the table reminded Hardison of their knowing more about this shit.
He passed through the bar without stopping to drink something, and went straight to Lucille, parked behind the building. He had to see what they knew - the time for paying attention to the trust issues was long gone.
It took him almost half an hour to dig up the remains of the voice tapes from Estrella; he was lucky that nothing was done on that computer after they’d left the corridor and entered the van, and nothing was written over them. He quickly searched back to the moment when Nate asked him to cut himself off, but just to be sure, he went a minute before that, when they went into that office by the stairs. Yes, Eliot definitely said he was quitting, the first thing on the list, finishing with breaking of Nate’s arms if he tried to touch him or come closer. But why the hell did he try to stop him from getting out of there, quitting or not? That didn’t make any sense - though, he was delirious and completely lost, that was why he ignored it at the first place, while he was listening to it.
Yet, it wasn’t the first statement of a similar sort, he remembered. The last phone call with Eliot was revealing a lot, too, and they were all listening to it in Lucille. From this perspective, Eliot’s asking Nate not to tell them what he had done, and to keep them under the assumption that he died somewhere else, not connected to the team, told him that Eliot thought they wouldn’t be able to deal with his doings, and that he died while doing that for them. But, he wasn’t dead, he was with them again, though he tried to stop Nate from taking him out of that office… and no matter how deep in shock he was, he had to know that leaving him there would be a death sentence. Damn. As the pieces slowly started to fall into the right places, Hardison was less and less eager to actually listen to the part that would explain everything.
Maybe Sophie was right, and some things were not for everybody to know. The two of them knew it, and they didn’t seem frightened by the situation, they were just worried, and it should show him that all this shit could end up with a happy end after all. They would act and do something if crisis was about to explode, right?
Or they gave up, said one tiny scared voice inside his head, because they knew there was no use fighting already lost battles. Nate was out of everything connected to Eliot for two days.
Hardison sighed, pissed because thinking that should calm his fears down ended with a much worse fear than he expected.
Before he could change his mind, he played the entire conversation from their entering the office, all the lines. Clear voices and the sounds of shooting brought him back into those stressful fifteen minutes of pure fear, and his heart was already thumping in his throat when he came to the part when Nate cut them off.
Yep, he shouldn’t listen to it.
Eliot’s voice was strangely flat when he talked about the dead in the corridor: flat but full of despair that was leaking in his every word. Hardison’s heart sank. He was too busy to actually acknowledge all the dots as people, people who died in that shooting. But Eliot kept track all the time. All those people died because he started the fight, and he knew it. He fucking felt it, and that was tearing him apart.
It got even worse when he continued about Marco’s Tavern, Rojas and the Mexicans that died there, and something clenched in Hardison’s gut when he finally realized the whole burden that laid on his back. It wasn’t just an effect of the shock… it was that whole night, all the dead people, that crushed on him at the end and he didn’t want to, he couldn’t, continue with all that torment, and giving up and dying was the easiest escape from it.
“Let me go, Nate. Everything I touch dies. I will kill you all.”
Hardison let go of a breath he didn’t recall holding. He listened to the long silence after those words, completely understanding why even Nate couldn’t say anything to this.
He buried his face in his hands, feeling his mind horribly empty of every coherent thought, he felt only the need to, to… fuck, that whisper was nightmare material. Torn apart, defeated, and so fucking scared.
Oh, Sophie, you were so right. He shouldn’t know all this. What use was it that he now knew what caused that fear in Eliot’s eyes when he hit his phone? What was the use of knowing why he refused to sleep when they were near, why he was tormented every time they came within his reach, trying to hold himself together and not falling apart and killing them? Why he was so desperately trying to control himself and put distance between them… and finally, why he was just waiting for the opportunity to leave?
He was a fool when he thought he blamed them for this shit; nope, Eliot Spencer wouldn’t think that for a second. He was cursed with the deadly ability to kill, and at the same time to not be able to diminish that act. He knew exactly what he had done, knew and felt all the consequences. Full responsibility, or nothing. He even told him just that, when he spoke about shooting Parker; his decisions. He was paying for them, but he wasn’t regretting them. Eliot would rather think that they blamed him for all that death, not vice versa.
He had no idea how long he had been sitting in the dark van, lost in the battle of pain and guilt. Yep, maybe Eliot wasn’t blaming them, but it surely didn’t mean they couldn’t blame themselves. There wasn’t any way to repay what he had done for them - as always, when words were empty and insufficient, nothing would be said.
He wiped his eyes and pressed both palms to his temples; he had to get it together and return to the apartment, and he dreaded it, knowing he was helpless, that there was nothing he could do to solve it. To help. Demons were very fastidious; the stronger the victim, the stronger the demon. He couldn’t quite imagine how one could beat entire horde of demons, waiting in line, but he knew only one person who would, maybe, be able to do it.
He searched through the memory of the last days, trying to find any sign that would tell him Eliot was fighting already, but he couldn’t tell - all he saw was that damn retreat from everything. It might be too early to expect a fight from a half dead man, but now he knew what he would look for when he got back.
And maybe he couldn’t help, but he surely could reduce the little things, give him time to concentrate on real problems. All that shit about the fear that he would kill them had to go… if that was a real danger, they would have been dead ten times over in those days. Who was blaming whom, and who was ditching whom, too - stupid little misunderstandings that he figured were only hindering factors, they were drawing his attention away from dealing with the bigger ones.
If anyone could go through this and remain sane, that was Eliot. He had to have trust in him.
.
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***
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Nothing changed when he returned to the apartment. They were all still sitting, Eliot was busy with the phone, and only the new thing was a burning pain in his gut and a lump in his throat that he couldn’t get rid of.
The table acknowledged his return with glances, except Nate. He didn’t look at him, he was playing solitaire on his laptop.
“I’ll need that,” he said standing by the table, and Nate just turned the laptop to him, eying him with a dry smile.
“Be my guest,” he said conversationally, but it couldn’t erase the penetrating concentration in his eyes. He was reading him like an open book, there was no point in hiding anything.
Then he realized, finally… Nate wasn’t worried about the little things, he knew they would deal with it… he was waiting in the background, waiting for the bigger demons to show up. He knew them, oh hell, he knew them well. That thought was strangely comforting, and he was almost able to smile.
“Betsy, he has to sleep, right?” Hardison asked the nurse while going to pick up laptop cables.
“Desperately. Why?”
“Because he obviously isn’t tired enough,” he smirked, took the laptop and went to the bed.
The alien was sitting comfortably in Eliot’s head again, he saw that dreadful calmness when he raised his eyes to look at him. He plugged in the laptop, going around the bed, noticing him stiffing when he went behind him and he was tempted to continue with that, to increase his unease to the point he would have to admit that even totally nervous he wouldn’t kill him, but Eliot was too weak for that.
He returned in front of him and opened the laptop. “Now, move your lazy ass to the right,” he said, taking off his shoes.
The calmness was destroyed in a second. “What are you do-” his eyes were instantly alert, but Hardison didn’t came here to negotiate. He grinned and sat in the bed beside him, resting his back on the pillows.
“You can move over to make room, or you can snuggle, your choice,” he grinned when Eliot withdrew as far from him as he could, with a hissed curse. His arms were again over the bandages and the tension that radiated from him was stronger than a wall between them.
Hardison started typing, listening to his breathing, quick, shallow, controlled breaths that were on the edge of hyperventilation. It wasn’t that Eliot didn’t have anything to say, he couldn’t, too occupied with control and fear. Perfect. Without a word, he put the mask between them. “Now, you’re obviously bored, and playing games on the phone is useless. I was thinking about a Star Wars marathon, to finally define all differences between Star Trek, but since we have been separated for the last few days, a short briefing would be much cleverer.”
He placed the laptop in his lap, turning it slightly so Eliot could see it. “May I present you the blueprints of Massachusetts General? I can explain in detail everything that it took to find them, all the versions of it, and connect them into the one that was the most relevant, but I don’t want to risk you walking out of here, so we shall agree, simply, that it required fucking brilliance to get them, okay?” he sneaked a sideways glance at him. “Actual looking at the screen would be a useful contribution on your part.”
“This is not a good time, Hardison.” The anguish leaked into his leveled voice, through gritted teeth. He kept his gaze in front of him.
“It is. You’re not sleeping and resting, so we can do something useful instead. This is a detailed display of the apartment on Blossom Street, with the view to your window. I thought about buying a telescope at one point. Did Betsy tell you that you woke up right at the moment I was placing the camera in your room, and that I had to crawl under the bed to hide? She was a diversion, I sneaked out on all fours… poor Eric was stunned.”
Now Eliot looked at him… not at the screen, not sightlessly in front of him, he turned his head.
“Yep, I know what you are thinking now… what a wasted chance to stop that hospital hide and seek at a very beginning, right?”
“I woke up because a zombie was staring at me.” His voice was still restrained, but at least he answered. “Interesting… message.”
“I wasn’t staring, I was checking your readings. Where did you come up with zombies?” Hardison frowned, thinking. “Maybe I’ll need to reconsider my idea to make you watch The Walking Dead. It’s a story about a guy who gets shot and ends up in hospital, and when he wakes up he finds himself in a zombie apocalypse, the whole hospital full of zombies…” he glanced at his eyes, the message was clear. “No? Yep, I thought so. Okay, no zombies,” he sighed and pressed few more keys, then remembered something. “But I wasn’t the first visit - do you know what I have found duct taped under your bed? Your kitchen knives. Parker was first.”
“In fact, Parker was the second,” Sophie exclaimed from the kitchen. “Do you want some tea?”
“That would be great, thank you,” Hardison said.
“I do remember that I strictly forbid any visits.” Nate’s murmuring was barely a sound.
The two new voices messed up the first signs of his relaxation, Hardison noticed, he was tensed again, looking at the table as if he expected they would start to gather all around them.
“Sophie, don’t hurry with that tea, we’ll first do this, okay?”
She got the message and just nodded, not speaking again, but Parker was never good at reading unsaid things. She came to the bed with a bowl of popcorn, looking at them with a clear frown. “I still didn’t forgive you for removing them,” she murmured. “He might have needed them at some point, and what then?”
Eliot didn’t visibly react to her approaching, he just lowered his eyes to the blanket. Hardison quickly checked his breathing - it was little slower, but the tension was still present in his every muscle. He couldn’t say if he was retreating again and this silence wasn’t a good sign at all. If he refused to talk and participate, there would be almost nothing to do to make him return again. He stayed silent, not sure what to say for a moment, when he noticed that Eliot wasn’t simply looking into the blanket… he was burning the holes in it.
“The second day in the hospital.” Eliot’s voice was hoarse and with a very vicious edge when he slowly raised his eyes from the blanket. “Can someone, please explain to me how my knives… came to be at the hospital from the apartment that was occupied with Chileans… who were still waiting for you to come?”
Uh -oh.
Sophie quickly pointed at Parker, at the same time that Hardison spoke. “She did it.”
Parker stopped in the middle of the step and swallowed the popcorn, blinking. “What? We needed the stuff. That’s what I do. Nobody noticed me.”
Hardison hid the smile; this was the first time Eliot spoke to all of them and asked something, for three days he was just replying to their questions. There was a slight change in the kind of Eliot’s tension… he was pretty sure he wasn’t now thinking about the possibility that he could snap and kill them, he was simply… mad. A man could count on Parker to set the things right.
“You just don’t do things like that alone, Parker!” It was still a whisper, but it had a lot of snarl in it.
“I did,” she shrugged and pushed the bowl into Eliot - he had to unclench his grip on the bandages to catch the bowl, and Hardison realized he had an ally who knew very well what she was doing.
Parker stepped onto the bed, and stood for a second looking down on them. “Cute,” she smiled and walked between the two of them, carefully. She sat on the head rest behind them, placing her feet on the pillows between their shoulders.
Eliot put the mask on his face. Hardison cleared his throat, suddenly not so certain about her decisions. It was one thing to have him near, with a laptop, but someone behind him, and above him, must have been unbearable for his fragile control. His knuckles were completely white, and bowl was in danger of breaking at any second.
“What… what is the static of this bed, Hardison?” Eliot asked quietly, and Hardison cursed. The bed was on wheels, and they were all at one end of it, with Parker as ballast on the rearmost end.
“Parker, don’t make any sudden moves. We should be okay if we just…sit.”
A green sock slowly reached forward between their shoulders and pressed the screen. “There. You have a mistake in the blueprints - that corridor ends with a storage room, it has no entrance to the stairs.” Hardison watched the stopping of Eliot’s breathing when green thing moved just few inches from his face; one muscle in his jaw was tilting. Parker obviously noticed that too, because she giggled and waved with her toes. “Don’t worry, I won’t tickle you… yet.”
Eliot’s response was a muffled hiss.
“Let’s don’t do anything that can turn us over, okay?” Hardison elbowed her other foot; it was enough for now.
She carefully bent forward and took the bowl. “Okay, you’re right. Betsy would bitch at us for hours.” That caused them all to flinch and glance cautiously to the table.
“It’s a good thing I was shot, and not poisoned or irradiated.” Eliot’s interjection sounded strange, said casually, in a strange discrepancy with a posture that was still stiff. “How would you crawl out of the room in hazmat suit?”
Hardison froze and his fingers on the keyboard stopped for a second. He glanced at Eliot. Of course he was looking at his fingers.
“What if’s are useless.” He cleared his throat again.
“I prefer orange ones,” Eliot murmured, looking at the screen with interest. Hardison decided to ignore that interjection - it was safer than starting to think about what the chances were, what a coincidence it was for Eliot to start talking about orange hazmat suits so shortly after…
“Have you ever wondered what happened to your knife holster?” he asked sweetly, and this time two men flinched. He smirked at Nate and turned to Eliot who was eying him cautiously.
“We’ll come to that point eventually. Before that, here is a short report from the first day, before you woke up. Parker, jump in at any point…figuratively, not literally, please.”
Yep, this was going to work, he promised himself, smiling as he typed, explaining the position of the cameras. Just as long like Parker didn’t try to force feed Eliot with the popcorn, as long they didn’t end up on the floor squashed into jelly by the monster bed… they were going to live through this shit. This time, together.
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